At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of
18--, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a
meerschaum, in company with my friend, C. Auguste Dupin, in his
little back library, or book-closet, au troisi�me, No. 33 Rue
Dun�t, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had
maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual
observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied
with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of
the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing
certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between
us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the
Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rog�t.
I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when
the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old
acquaintance, Monsieur G----, the Prefect of the Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much
of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we
had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the
dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but
sat down again, without doing so, upon G.'s saying that he had
called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend,
about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of
trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Dupin, as he
forbore to enkindle the wick, "we shall examine it to better
purpose in the dark."
"That is another one of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who
had the fashion of calling everything "odd" that was beyond his
comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of
"oddities."
"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe,
and rolled toward him a comfortable chair.
"And what is the difficulty now?" I asked. "Nothing more in the
assassination way I hope?"
"Oh, no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is
very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it
sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like
to hear the details of it because it is so excessively odd."
"Simple and odd," said Dupin.
"Why, yes; and not exactly that either. The fact is, we have all
been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet
baffles us altogether."
"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at
fault," said my friend.
"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laughing
heartily.
"Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said Dupin.
"Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?"
"A little too self-evident."
"Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha!--ho! ho! ho!" roared our visitor,
profoundly amused, "oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!"
"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I asked.
"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he gave a long,
steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair.
"I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me
caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest
secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now
hold, were it known that I confided it to any one."
"Proceed," said I.
"Or not," said Dupin.
"Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very
high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance has
been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who
purloined it is known; that beyond a doubt; he was seen to take
it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession."
"How is this known?" asked Dupin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from the nature
of the document, and from the non-appearance of certain results
which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's
possession--that is to say, from his employing it as he must
design in the end to employ it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its
holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is
immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond of the cant of
diplomacy.
"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin.
"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who
shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a
personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder
of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage
whose honor and peace are so jeopardized."
"But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would depend upon the
robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who
would dare--"
"The thief," said G., "is the Minister D----, who dares all
things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The
method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The
document in question--a letter, to be frank--had been received by
the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. During its
perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other
exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal
it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer,
she was forced to place it, open it was, upon a table. The
address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus
unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the
Minister D----. His lynx eye immediately perceives the paper,
recognizes the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion
of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some
business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he
produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens
it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close
juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen
minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he
takes also from the table the letter to which he has no claim.
Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention
to the act, in the presence of the third person who stood at her
elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own letter--of no
importance--upon the table."
"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have precisely what you
demand to make the ascendancy complete--the robber's knowledge of
the loser's knowledge of the robber."
"Yes," replied the Prefect; "and the power thus attained has, for
some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very
dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly
convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter.
But this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to
despair, she has committed the matter to me."
"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no
more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even
imagined."
"You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is possible that
some such opinion may have been entertained."
"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter is still
in the possession of the minister; since it is this possession,
and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power.
With the employment the power departs."
"True," said G.; "and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first
care was to make a thorough search of the minister's hotel; and
here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching
without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of
the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect
our design."
"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these investigations.
The parisian police have done this thing often before."
"Oh, yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of
the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently
absent from home all night. His servants are no means numerous.
They sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and,
being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have keys,
as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in
Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the
greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in
ransacking the D---- Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to
mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not
abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the
thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have
investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is
possible that the paper can be concealed."
"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although the letter
may be in possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he
may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?"
"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar
condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues
in which D---- is known to be involved, would render the instant
availability of the document--its susceptibility of being
produced at a moments notice--a point of nearly equal importance
with its possession."
"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I.
"That is to say, of being destroyed," said Dupin.
"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the premises.
As for its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider
that as out of the question."
"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice waylaid, as if
by footpads, and his person rigidly searched for my own
inspection."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin.
"D----, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must
have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he is a poet, which I
take to be only one removed from a fool."
"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his
meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of certain doggerel
myself."
"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."
"Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched everywhere.
I have had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire
building, room by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to
each. We examined, first the furniture of each apartment. We
opened every possible drawer; and I presume you know that, to a
properly trained police-agent, such a thing as a 'secret' drawer
is impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to
escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There
is a certain amount of bulk--of space--to be accounted for in
every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of
a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the
chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine ling needles you
have seen me employ. From the tables we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece
of furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an
article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within
the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of
bedposts are employed in the same way."
"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked.
"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient
wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we
were obliged to proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed--you could not have taken to
pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been
possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter
may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in
shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it
might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did
not take to pieces all the chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better--we examined the rungs of every
chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the jointings of every
description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful
microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we
should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of
gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple.
Any disorder in the gluing--any unusual gap in the joints--would
have sufficed to insure detection."
"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the
plates, and you probed the beds and the bedclothes, as well as
the curtains and carpets."
"That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every
particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house
itself. We divided its entire surface into compartments, which we
numbered, so that none might be missed; then we scrutinized each
individual square inch throughout the premises, including the two
houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before."
"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you must have had a
great deal of trouble."
"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious."
"You included the grounds about the houses?"
"All the grounds are paved with brick. They give us comparatively
little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and
found it undisturbed."
"You looked among D----'s papers, of course, and into the books
of the library?"
"Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only
opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume,
not contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according to the
fashion of some of our police officers. We also measured the
thickness of every book-cover, with the most accurate
admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of
the microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently meddled
with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should
have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the
hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with
the needles."
"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?"
"Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined the boards
with the microscope."
"And the paper on the walls?"
"Yes."
"You looked into the cellars?"
"We did."
"Then," I said, "you have been making a miscalculation, and the
letter is not upon the premises, as you suppose."
"I fear you are right there," said the Prefect. "And now, Dupin,
what would you advise me to do?"
"To make a thorough research of the premises."
"That is absolutely needless," replied G----. "I am not more sure
that I breathe than I am that the letter is not at the hotel."
"I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. "You have, of
course, an accurate description of the letter?"
"Oh, yes!"--And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book,
proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and
especially of the external, appearance of the missing document.
Soon after finishing the perusal of this description, he took his
departure, more entirely depressed in spirits than I have ever
known the good gentleman before.
In about a month afterward he paid another visit, and found us
occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and
entered into some ordinary conversation. At length I said:
"Well, but G., what of the purloined letter? I presume you have
at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as
overreaching the Minister?"
"Confound him, say I--yes; I made the re-examination, however, as
Dupin suggested--but it was all labor lost, as I knew it would
be."
"How much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked Dupin.
"Why, a very great deal--a very liberal reward--I don't like to
say how much precisely; but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't
mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any
one who could obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming
of more and more importance every day; and the reward has been
lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I could do no more
than I have done."
"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his
meerschaum, "I really--think, G., you have not exerted
yourself--to the utmost in the matter. You might--do a little
more, I think, eh?"
"How?--in what way?"
"Why--puff, puff--you might--puff, puff--employ counsel in the
matter, eh?--puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they
tell of Abernethy?"
"No; hang Abernethy!"
"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a
certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging upon this
Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an
ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his
case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual.
"'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms are such
and such; now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?'
"'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.'"
"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am perfectly
willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give
fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter."
"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a
check-book, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount
mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter."
I was astonished. The Prefect appeared absolutely
thunder-stricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and
motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth,
and eyes that seemed startling from their sockets; then
apparently recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen,
and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and
signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across
the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and
deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire,
took thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary
grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling
hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling
and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from
the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable
since Dupin had requested him to fill up the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.
"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their
way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly
versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to
demand. Thus, when G---- detailed to us his mode of searching the
premises at the Hotel D----, I felt entire confidence in his
having made a satisfactory investigation--so far as his labors
extended."
"So far as his labors extended?" said I.
"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not only the best
of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the
letter been deposited within the range of their search, these
fellows would, beyond a question, have found it."
I merely laughed--but he seemed quite serious in all that he
said.
"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and
well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to
the case and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious
resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to
which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by
being too deep or too shallow for the matter in hand; and many a
school-boy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight
years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and
odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is
played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of
these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or
odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he
loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the
school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay
in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his
opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and,
holding up his closed hand, asks, 'Are they even or odd?' Our
school-boy replies, 'Odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial
he wins, for he then says to himself: 'The simpleton had them
even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just
sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will
therefore guess odd';--he guesses odd and wins. Now, with a
simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus:
'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and,
in the second, he will propose to himself, upon the first
impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first
simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is
too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting
it even as before. I will therefore guess even';--he guesses
even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the school-boy,
whom his fellows termed 'lucky,'--what, in its last analysis, is
it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's
intellect with that of his opponent."
"It is," said Dupin; "and, upon inquiring of the boy by what
means he effected the thorough identification in which his
success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to
find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is
any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the
expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance
with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or
sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or
correspond with the expression.' This response of the school-boy
lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been
attributed to Rochefoucault, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and
to Campanella."
"And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner's intellect
with that of his opponent, depends, if I understand you aright,
upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is
admeasured."
"For its practical value it depends upon this," replied Dupin;
"and the Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, first, by
default of this identification, and, secondly, by
ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the
intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their
own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for any thing hidden,
advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They
are right in this much--that their own ingenuity is a faithful
representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the
individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the
felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above
their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no
variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when
urged by some unusual emergency--by some extraordinary
reward--they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice,
without touching their principles. What, for example, in this
case of D----, has been done to vary the principle of action?
What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and
scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the
building into registered square inches--what is it all but an
exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of
principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions
regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in the long
routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he has
taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter,
not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg, but, at least,
in some out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor
of thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a
gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that
such recherch�s nooks for concealment ar adapted only for
ordinary occasions, and would be adopted by ordinary intellects;
for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article
concealed--a disposal in this recherch� manner,--is, in the very
first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery
depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere
care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the
case is of importance--or, what amounts to the same thing in the
political eyes, when the reward is of magnitude,--the qualities
in question have never been known to fail. You will now
understand what I mean in suggesting that, had the purloined
letter been hidden anywhere within the limits of the Prefect's
examination--in other words, had the principle of its concealment
been comprehended within the principles of the Prefect--its
discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question.
This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified; and the
remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the
Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All
fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty
of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are
fools."
"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers,
I know; and both have attained reputation in letters. The
minister I believe has written learnedly on the Differential
Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet."
"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As a poet and as
a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician,
he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at
the mercy of the Prefect."
"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been
contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at
naught the well-digested ideas of centuries. The mathematical
reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence."
"'Il y a � parier,'" replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, "'que
toute id�e publique, toute convention re�ue, est une sottise, cor
elle a convenue au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I
grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error
to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its
promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for
example, they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into
application to algebra. The French are the originators of this
particular deception; but if a term is of any importance--if
words derive any value from applicability--then 'analysis'
conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies
'ambition,' 'religio' 'religion,' or 'homines honesti' a set of
honorable men."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the
algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason
which is cultivated in any especial form other than the
abstractly logical. I dispute, in particular, the reason educed
by mathematical study. The mathematics are the science of form
and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to
observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in
supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra are
abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I
am confounded at the universality with which it has been
received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth.
What is true of relation--of form and quantity--is often grossly
false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it
is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the
whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of
motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have
not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their
values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which
are only truths within the limits of relation. But the
mathematician argues from his finite truths, through habit, as if
they were of an absolutely general applicability--as the world
indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned
'Mythology,' mentions an analogous source of error, when he says
that 'although the pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget
ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing
realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are pagans
themselves, the 'pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences
are made, not so much through lapse of memory as through an
unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet
encountered the mere mathematician who would be trusted out of
equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point
of his faith that x2 + px was absolutely and unconditionally
equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment,
if you please, that you believe occasions may occur when x2 + px
is not altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand
what you mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient,
for beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.
"I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his
last observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a
mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of
giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician
and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with
reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew
him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I
considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary political
modes of action. He could not fail to be anticipate--and events
have proved he did not fail to anticipate--the waylayings to
which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the
secret investigations of his premises. His frequent absences from
home at night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids
to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity
for thorough search to the police, and thus sooner to impress
them with the conviction to which G----, in fact, did finally
arrive--the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises.
I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at
some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the
invariable principle of political action in searches for articles
concealed--I felt that this whole train of thought would
necessarily pass through the mind of the minister. It would
imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of
concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see
that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be
as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to
the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in
fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to
simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of
choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect
laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was
just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its
being so very self-evident."
"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought
he would have fallen into convulsions."
"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict
analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has
been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may
be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a
description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems
to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true
in the former, than a large body is with more difficulty set in
motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is
commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter,
that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more
constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of
inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more
embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of
their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street
signs, over the shop doors, are the most attractive of
attention?"
"I have never given the matter a thought," I said.
"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a
map. One party playing requires another to find a given word--the
name of town, river, state, or empire--any word, in short, upon
the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the
game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them
the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such
words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart
to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and
placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being
excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely
analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect
suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too
obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point,
it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the
Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the
minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of
the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that
world from perceiving it.
"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and
discriminating ingenuity of D----; upon the fact that the
document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it
to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the
Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that
dignitary's ordinary search--the more satisfied I became that, to
conceal this letter, the minister had resorted to the
comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to
conceal it at all.
"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green
spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at
the Ministerial hotel. I found D---- at home, yawning, lounging,
and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last
extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic
human being now alive--but that is only when nobody sees him.
"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented
the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I
cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while
seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.
"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near where he
sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters
and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few
books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny,
I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion.
"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a
trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by
a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the
middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four
compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary
letter. The last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly
in two, across the middle--as if a design, in the first instance,
to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed,
in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D----
cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female
hand, to D----, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and
even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost
divisions of the rack.
"No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be
that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance,
radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read to us
so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the
D---- cipher; there it was small and read, with the ducal arms of the
S---- family. Here, the address, to the minister, was diminutive
and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal
personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a
point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these
differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn
condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical
habits of D----, and so suggestive of a design to delude the
beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the
document;--these things, together with the hyperobtrusive
situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor,
and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I
had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly
corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to
suspect.
"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I
maintained a most animated discussion with the minister, upon a
topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite
him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In
examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and
arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a
discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have
entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed
them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the
broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having
been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a
reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed
the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to
me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out,
re-directed and re-sealed. I bade the minister good-morning, and
took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the
table.
"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed,
quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus
engaged, however, a large report, as if of a pistol, was heard
immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded
by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified
mod. D---- rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out.
In the meantime I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put
it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as
regards externals) which I had carefully prepared at my
lodgings--imitating the D---- cipher, very readily, by means of a
seal formed of bread.
"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic
behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of
women and children. It proved, however, to have been without
ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a
drunkard. When he had gone, D---- came from the window, whither I
had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view.
Soon afterward I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a
man in my own pay."
"But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter by
a fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit,
to have seized it openly, and departed?"
"D----," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve.
His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his
interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never
have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of
Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart
from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions.
In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For
eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She has
now him in hers--since, being unaware that the letter is not in
his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was.
Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than
awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus
Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of
singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the
present instance I have no sympathy--at least no pity--for him
who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man
of genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to
know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by
her whom the Prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced
to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack."
"How? did you put any thing particular in it?"
"Why--it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior
blank--that would have been insulting. D----, at Vienna once, did
me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I
should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in
regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I
thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He is well acquainted
with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet
the words--
"'---- ----Un dessein si funeste,
S'il n'est digne d'Atr�e, est digne de Thyeste.'
